It may be desirable to be able to distribute digital information in a medium as widely accepted and easily carried as a business, credit, or collectors card that can be read or read and written to by a standard CD drive. For example, Spector, U.S. Pat. No. 5,090,561 discusses using a CD-ROM as a baseball collectable (Col. 2, lines 3–10) and provides a case for displaying such collectibles. However, a standard 12 cm CD-ROM is rather large and awkward compared to a standard baseball card, business card, or credit card size format.
It also may be desirable to change the shape of the small compact disc of the invention. It is known that a standard 12 cm in diameter compact disc can be cut (made) to have straight sides and play as a standard 12 cm diameter CD. Such a product is presently marketed under the trade name CyberTract™ and is commercially available through the American Tract Society and made with the cooperation of DISCART™, LLC, which claims copyright to the disc shapes and also claims patents pending.
One such tract, for example, has been marketed using the likeness of the late Mickey Mantle imprinted onto the face of the device. The device is encoded with text, graphics, and video of the late Mickey Mantle discussing his religious conversion. The overall appearance (but not size) of the device is akin to that of a baseball card or collectable, on one side.
The DISCART™ device, however, is made as a cut down (rectangular) version of a standard 12 cm compact disc (CD). This disc maintains the 12 cm diameter at four points to align itself in the CD drive. As a result, the packaged product is larger than a standard baseball card or sports collectable. Thus, products such as the DISCART™ device may not be as readily acceptable for collectors. Such an apparatus, for example, would not fit within standard baseball card holders, drawers, or shelving.
In addition, while the device appears to play satisfactorily in most CD players and CD-ROM drives, after testing the inventor has discovered that the device may create some vibrations or noise when played or used in some CD players or CD-ROM drives. The rectangular shape of the disc creates a slight imbalance or non-aerodynamic shape which may result in vibration in some CD players.
Another approach is a CD-ROM card marketed as “The CarD” by ADIVAN High Tech AG, Switzerland (www.adivan.com). The inventor is unaware of the first disclosure date of the ADIVAN device, and thus does not represent that the device qualifies as “prior art” per se. However, the device is disclosed herein under the spirit of the duty of disclosure.
The ADIVAN device is a CD-ROM provided in a number of shapes and sizes within a specified range. Four “knobs”, spaced along a 75 mm diameter circle protrude from the underside of card, to align the card in a CD-ROM drive utilizing the 8 cm depressed portion of the CD-ROM drive tray. The presence of protruding knobs may make the card less useful as a business card device, as the resultant card is no longer flat. As such, storage devices for business cards, baseball cards, and the like, may not readily accept such a card. The knobs also make the card less aerodynamic and cause greater vibration. It would also appear to require a special mold to form the knobs.
One approach to solving such problems might be to use the 8 cm CD of the prior art. It is known that an 8 cm in diameter compact disc made by the Sony Corporation is commercially available. The 8 cm compact disc holds the same type of information that the 12 cm diameter disc can and is playable in standard CD drives. Such CD “singles” have heretofore been used mainly for music applications and the like. However, even an 8 cm CD is too large to fit in a standard baseball or business card size format.
Various adapters are known in the art for attaching to a 8 cm CD to adapt the 8 cm CD for playback on a 12 cm CD player, much as the old spindle adapters were used to play 45 RPM records on LP turntables. These adapters were designed when CD players did not incorporate an 8 cm aligning circle as they do today. Such adapters were also designed for use in compact disc cartridges (Caddys) which are very rare today. These adapters are still helpful today in playing 8 cm CDs in multi-disc cartridges and front loading players. 90 to 95% of CD players used today are tray loading drive types with 8 cm aligning circles, making these adapters unnecessary in the majority of CD players.
Yamamori, U.S. Pat. No. 4,837,784, issued Jun. 6, 1989, discloses one such device. It should be noted that it appears that the device of Yamamori engages the smaller 8 cm disc, thus forming a package which is 12 cm in diameter. Although the device of Yamamori may be suitable for playing back 8 cm discs, the overall structure of the apparatus suffers from some drawbacks.
To begin with, the adaptor has a 12 cm outer diameter. Thus, if the adaptor is distributed with an 8 cm disc, the overall package size would need to be at least 12 cm in diameter, or that of a standard CD case (e.g., so-called “jewel box”). It also requires excess handling of the 8 cm disc and the possibility of disengagement of the adaptor from the disc resulting in damage to the disc or the disc drive.
Eihaus, U.S. Pat. No. 4,889,330, issued Feb. 6, 1990, Published EP application 0,331,389, published Sep. 6, 1989, and EP Patent Specification 0,391,638 published Apr. 19, 1995, all disclose similar CD adapters for adapting an 8 cm CD to a 12 cm format. However, all of those devices appear to suffer from the same fundamental limitations of the Yamamori device. In particular, the overall size of such adapters precludes them from being packaged into a package substantially smaller than a standard 12 cm CD-ROM. Moreover, such devices appear to physically attach to the CD-ROM itself.
Yamashita et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,457,677, issued Oct. 10, 1995, discloses an adaptor for a smaller CD for use in a multi-CD adaptor. The device grips the smaller CD which is then removed from the adaptor laterally by the playback apparatus. Such a device may not be readily adaptable to a tray-type CD-ROM player or the like.
Typical CD-ROM drives with opening trays may be provided with a depressed inner portion which may be used to center an 8 cm CD-ROM. Once the CD-ROM is placed in this depression, and the tray closed, the spindle of the CD-ROM drive may engage the center hole of an 8 cm CD-ROM successfully and the 8 cm CD-ROM may be read. Without such a depression, the 8 cm CD-ROM may slide about when the tray is closed, and the spindle may not properly engage, possibly damaging or scratching the 8 cm CD-ROM.
While such a solution may work for an 8 cm CD-ROM, it may not work for other, odd sizes. Given the large installed base of CD-ROM drives, one wishing to distribute a non-standard (e.g., diameter other than 8 cm or 12 cm) CD-ROM size, one cannot expect users to buy new CD-ROM drives with yet a second depression for yet another size CD-ROM.